Ten Days
by crazyarsonist
Summary: Ten days. That's all it took for Isane and Renji to really get to know each other.


Useless Notes: Okay, to be honest with y'all, I have absolutely no idea how I thought I could bring these two together

**Useless Notes:** Okay, to be honest with y'all, I have absolutely no idea how I thought I could bring these two together. I mean, they hardly ever talk to each other on the show, right?

This isn't meant to start anything romantic; these two are strictly friends in here, but if you want to think otherwise, then it's okay.

Please bear with the randomness, but I promise, I made this one good so you won't sleep through it.

… Okay, I tried to make it good, but whatever. Just read through it if you're still interested and please (please, please) don't forget to leave a review whether you liked it or not.

Thanks!

**Disclaimer:** Don't own nothin'.

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**Ten Days**

_**/day.01/**_

She knows who he is of course, but when Isane sees Renji at one of their vice-captain's meetings, she feels as if she's seeing him for the first time. Tall, red head, an obnoxiously proud aura and a raw, powerful reiatsu forming around him. She sees his eyes and decides right then and there that this Abarai-fukutaichou person may be a lot more than just first impressions.

At the same meeting, Renji's lazy gaze lands on Isane's head (since he's so much taller than most of them). He knows who she is of course; they work together and their divisions are really close to each other, but yet, he feels as if he's seeing her for the first time. The two haven't so much as talked to each other and the only things Renji knows about her is that she's calm, kind, quiet and reserved. Oh, that and the fact that she's a pretty okay healer and that she doesn't talk much. That's about it. But as soon as he sees her, he picks up a faint trace of her polite and gentle reiatsu and he decides that there might be actually more to this Kotetsu-fukutaichou person than what meets the eye.

He wants to get to know her more.

Funnily enough, she thinks the same.

_**/day.02/**_

They see each other again the next day and Isane smiles and greets Renji a good morning before moving past him.

He nods distractedly in reply, but he stops in his path soon after and turns around, only to see her back walking off in the opposite direction. He scratches his head slowly and lets out a soft and tiny chuckle before moving on to his destination.

_**/day.03/**_

It's been another tiring morning at work for both vice-captains. When Renji sees Isane again, he thinks it only polite to ask her out for lunch.

She thinks it only polite to agree.

_**/day.04/**_

She's a bit like Rukia, he discovers. Even if he was the one who talked the most at their lunch yesterday, he appreciated her company just the same. Because just like Rukia, she's more of a listener, not a talker.

She on the other hand, thinks that although she hardly got a chance to talk at all during their lunch yesterday, she appreciated his company just the same. Renji's just full of stories and she thinks it's a good thing she prefers listening to talking.

As she tells her captain of her sentiments, she catches the mischievous glance Unohana-taichou gives her and Isane suddenly feels the heat rise up to her cheeks. She wonders how she looked like then.

Renji knows he will never tell his captain of this new kind of feeling he's having, since he knows Byakuya-taichou wouldn't care anyway. Unknown to him however, Byakuya does know what is going on with his vice-captain and Renji was right. Byakuya couldn't care less about the events happening in Renji's life.

He did think they'd make a nice couple though.

_**/day.05/**_

Today, it's raining and Isane is trying to make her way back to the Fourth after visiting Kiyone at the Thirteenth.

An equally rain-soaked Renji sees her just as he's about to enter his division and he tells her to come in first and wait for the rain to stop.

Grateful for the shelter, Isane agrees.

But the rain lasts long into the night and Isane tells Renji that as grateful as she is for the shelter, she really had to be getting back.

Renji grunts, grabs an umbrella and offers to walk her back to her division.

Grateful for the company, Isane agrees and goes out with him.

_**/day.06/**_

Unohana catches Isane staring into space in the middle of her paperwork. She normally does her work quickly so she can attend to the patients, but today, Isane is moving along at the pace of a snail. Unohana doesn't scold her; instead, she keeps her vice-captain company and asks her to tell her what happened last night.

Byakuya on the other hand, sees Renji doing his share of the paperwork with rapid ease. Normally, he would procrastinate, shove off his paperwork to do more training and do it when it was already night time. Today, the sun is still up and instead of training, Renji's in his office doing his paperwork. Byakuya doesn't scold him; instead he's kind of grateful that at least it's not his sister Renji was thinking about anymore.

_**/day.07/**_

While sparring with a subordinate, Renji gets bruised. He tries to reassure the unranked shinigami that it was nothing really, but nothing would calm him down. What would happen if he had crippled his vice-captain for life, he ranted.

Sighing loudly, Renji brought his hand to his head and said that he was going to drop by the Fourth Division on his break if it was going to make him happy.

It did, and the young man even thanked Renji for the match.

True to his word, Renji dropped by the Fourth Division to have his bruised wrist checked. To no one's surprise, it was Isane who examined his injury, since it was always Kotetsu-fukutaichou who handled the scary looking patients (like Madarame Ikkaku for example). Besides, Unohana-taichou was at a captain's meeting and everyone else was scared of Renji.

As she's wrapping the bandage around his wrist, he notices the gentle and caring aura behind her hands. He randomly wonders to himself if she has to do the cleaning duties too.

Meanwhile, as she's holding his hand (his abnormally large hand, she chuckles quietly to herself), she randomly imagines all the scars and bruises he might have had during his time with the Eleventh. It must have been a lot, she muses quietly to herself, since the Eleventh did belong to Zaraki-taichou after all and since Madarame-san came from that division too. Both were regulars at the clinic.

Renji however, isn't.

Soon, she finishes her examination and Renji mumbles a thank you before nodding and getting up to leave. Isane calls out to him to take care of himself just as he's reached the doorway. He stops momentarily and gives her a little wave before going on out.

His back may have been turned to her, but somehow, she feels him smile and before she knows it, she smiles too.

_**/day.08/**_

The next day, Renji goes back to the Fourth to properly thank Isane for yesterday. But as soon as he enters, his eyes widen in surprise as Yachiru, his former vice-captain, is sitting on a stool that's taller than she is, swinging her feet back and forth as she waits for Ken-chan to hurry up and get healed already.

The small vice-captain turns around at the sound of the opening door and as soon as she sees Renji, her eyes light up in recognition, yells out a tattooed-face and proceeds to gnaw on the red head she hasn't seen for so long.

Isane, who was also in the office at the time, thinks that it's the funniest thing she's ever seen (Yachiru-fukutaichou gnawing and drooling all over Abarai-san's perfect hairdo) and she brings a hand to her mouth to try and stop the giggles from escaping her mouth.

In the midst of his gnawing session, Renji hears Isane's laughter and he grins sheepishly at her. As much as he liked her smile, Renji decides that seeing her laugh is even better.

_**/day.09/**_

The two learn new things about each other everyday.

Now, Renji knows that although she used to do the cleaning duties before, Isane has now devoted her time to being a full-time healer. She also gets the strangest nightmares whenever she sleeps and is always grateful for the tea and the talk her captain would give her afterwards. The reason she didn't talk so much is that she tells everything to her captain already; the two are so close, that both know that they can trust each other with anything. She values her sister as much as Renji values Rukia and she'd rather die than see anything bad happen to Kiyone. Isane's also made the effort to get to know each and every person in the Fourth Division and as a result, they look up to her as they would to a sister.

Isane in the meantime, now knows that Renji did use to get cuts and scrapes back at his stint with the Eleventh, but he preferred to treat them himself, since he wasn't the type to go around asking for help (which explained why she's never seen him at the clinic before). He's already formed a special bond with his zanpaktou and because of this, he was already able to achieve bankai. He doesn't tell anyone of his problems; he prefers to drown them down with alcohol. Whether he did it alone or with his friends, Renji found that the problems would go away then. However, they always came back in the morning with twice the punch through his hangovers. Everyone in his division is scared of him (except Byakuya of course). What he doesn't know however, is that they also look up to him in admiration, much like how the Fourth sees Isane.

When both have run out of stories to share, it is Isane who points out how late it's become. The two share a laugh and when silence finally descends on the pair, both vice-captains realize that they've told each other things they normally wouldn't tell others.

Renji is the first to break the silence; he stands up and offers to walk Isane home again for the night. Isane smiles, accepts the offer and asks if he would like to talk again like this sometime. Renji smiles back and replies that yes, he would like that very much, thank you, before going outside, with Isane following close behind.

_**/day.10/**_

That sometime happened to be today.

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**A/N:** … Yeah, that's the end of it. Thanks for reading!


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